Mad Men Season 5 in the books

Mad Men Season 5 was extremely well made.  It ended with a perfect scene, in which Don is confronted by two lone women at the bar, and the shot ends as he turns to give his response.  The central question Mad Men explores is change and whether individuals are capable of changing.  Don has clearly changed, but will his old habits and history come back to bite him.  The shots of his brother Adam, triggered by the recent suicide of his co-worker, and the nagging tooth ache, a sign of his aging, suggest that he is changing, but will he revert to all habits. 

Megan and Ginsberg really starred in this season.  Megan's character is at times grown up and at times acts younger than Sally.  It's hard to blame her based on her degenerate parents.  Ginsberg is an odd duck, although he seems to be quite adept to the copywriter position.  He achieves a modicum of success at the job, and SCD sans Price has had one of its most successful quarters.  Pete has really started to turn into a Don Draper, cheating on his wife and despising time at home with his family. 

I am excited for Season 6, this is my favorite show of all time.

Walking Dead Season 2 Recap, Mad Men & Game of Thrones Forthcoming

In my opining on the written word earlier this month, I mentioned how books, specifically fiction novels, were being replaced by television series.  Grantland talks about the Golden Age of television this week, claiming Mad Men to be the last series of the age.  I do not have cable, but I still manage to follow a number of quality series, and I much prefer watching them sans commercials, which are quite annoying on the AMC shows.

Walking Dead season 2 recently wrapped up, with the group leaving Hershel's farm in a state of duress.  Rick Grimes had to kill his best friend Shane and as he let out in the season finale, he felt he had to do it, even though I am sure he believed there was another option.  This signifies a change in Rick's character, and him saying that this is no longer a democracy foreshadows a much colder and crueler Rick to the one we've seen trying to push democracy and equality in spite of Shane's Machiavellian views on the world as they know it.  The group is right on the brink of discovering a large new community and Andrea has already encountered a new character, who has some serious blade skills and what appears to be two zombie pets chained to her back.  I am looking forward to season 3, and hope that the in-fighting and bickering will be outweighed by zombie killing action in the forthcoming episodes.

Mad Men is in my top three favorite shows all time, following The Wire and The Sopranos.  I really enjoy the character of Don Draper, who is really only a character created by Dick Whitman.  The fact that Don works in advertising, selling a false image, is all too ironic, considering what he did in his past life.  With the passing of the real Don's wife and Dick/Don marrying the French-Canadian secretary and a new advertising agency being formed, this season holds a lot of surprises.  Will this be the season everything is revealed and Don falls from grace?  I look forward to these well-crafted episodes and can't wait to dig into the first episode now, which just finished downloading.

Finally, Game of Thrones first season was excellent, lots of intrigue, an abnormal story twist, a broad range of excellent characters, and great production means a quality show.  I am a huge science fiction book fan, and the Game of Thrones is adopted from George Martin's book series, which are considered the best science fiction books out there, although they are very long and the plots are quite circuitous.  I look forward to Arya and Tyrion who are very unique and intriguing characters, and can't wait to see the fight between House Stark and House Lannister.

Opining on the Written Word

A recent post by TED regarding the Kindle sparked my brain to think about the future of literature  I had also discussed Amazon's forthcoming retail outlet, which had prompted me to also consider this.  I have written about books many times on this site, as they are a personal passion of mine.  I love both the literature as well as the actual experience of reading the book.  I am interested in a iPad or Kindle in the future, but this would only be for mobile reading and the ability to carry multiple books at once.  I have tried e-books in the past and always felt something was missing.

I feel my opinion is important and valuable to this discussion, because of my age.  I am 24 years old, and many of my peers do not read for pleasure at all.  Thanks to the fantastic technology that provides us 24 hour news coverage, a variety of television programming, movies, music and social media, literature lacks the exclusivity to a captive audience that it once had.  Books are a time-consuming process especially compared to other forms of media.  A movie is long if it takes 3 hours to watch, and a television show is crammed into 19 minutes (Yes Entourage, I am looking at you!).  In comparison, a book can easily take a week to digest and oftentimes is full of above average vocabulary and a lack of visuals which makes it more of a mental chore.

For all of these reasons, I believe that literature will have to adapt, and may in the short term struggle.  It is going to become a specialized market, not dissimilar to theatre, which was a major draw back in the day, opera, and a number of other leisure activities that have fallen behind the times.   The TV networks have supplanted our need for a book series with well made shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Luck.  All of these shows are intricate and sometimes command multiple viewings.  The episodes are long enough that they can be digested for a period of time and discussed on the internet and at the office.  Everything about books takes too long.  It takes too long to read the book, you can watch an episode of Breaking Bad in an hour, and a season within a month, if you are trying.  Thanks to streaming video this is possible anywhere on the globe!  It takes too long for the next book in a series to get to market and requires a lot more physical production in the printing of the book, while an episode could essentially be released to the web and available instantaneously.

My generation simply does not like to read in the universal sense that our forefathers did.  We are a now nation, with 140 character limits on Twitter, and status updates on Facebook.  Epic books can be well over 500 pages in length!  This is not to say a phenomenon like Hunger Games, Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code can't become mainstream, but how many of your friends and family will never read the book and "just watch the movies"?

Some Updates

Congratulations to the Dallas Mavericks, specifically Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Kidd, Jason Terry & Mark Cuban! Dirk will definitely be remembered better, not considered soft, now that he has an NBA ring. He briefly left the court right after the game, probably had to let a few tears go, and did not want to do it on the court, in front of cameras. Jason Terry's irrational confidence inspired him to get a tattoo of the Finals trophy on his bicep before the season. Jason Kidd was finally able to capture an NBA title, claims he has 2-3 more seasons. Although I am not a huge Cuban fan, he redeemed himself a little bit in the past 48 hours, in my eyes, check out the picture above!

There are a number of reasons that Miami lost, but the two most obvious in my opinion are Lebron and Spoelstra. Lebron is arguably the best player in the NBA, and possibly one of the most gifted athletes of all time. However, he disappeared in the second half of that series, just like he did in the series against my Celtics last year. I still can't comprehend how he did just decide to get to the basket, like he always does, which results in a better overall offense and free throw attempts for Bron. I am very mystified by that performance. Secondly, Spoelstra was less than competent in the series, and really in the whole playoffs. I know people love him, for some reason, but I am not buying it. The Heat had NO offensive strategy in the 4th quarters of almost all Playoff, and especially Finals games. They were leading for 95% of the first 4 games, and ended up only being able to split them. They gave up a 15 point lead with 7:30 to go, and that's not acceptable as a coach.

I was very happy with last night's NHL hockey game, where the Bruins were able to even up the series, drawing a game 7 in Vancouver tomorrow. The Bruins outscored the Canucks 17-3 in Boston's TD Garden, now they just need to replicate it in Vancouver, where they have struggled immensely. The game was basically over halfway through the first quarter, where the Bruins scored 3 goals in quick succession, and Luongo was pulled for the MA Native Corey Schneider, who was Boston College's captain and hails from Marblehead on the North Shore, who let in another goal making it 4-0 and time to book tickets to Vancouver. The rest of the game was pretty chippy, lots of penalties, and a final score of 5-2. Marchand punched Daniel Sedin in the face roughly six times, saying "he felt like it" in the post-game interview. I think we will see Luongo in the next game. My sportsbook has Vancouver -155, meaning they are roughly 58%ish percent favored to win, and I feel that is a pretty good line, I like the under 5, although I wagered on that same outcome on game 6, which I knew I had no chance to collect after the first period.

In other unrelated news, I have been thoroughly enjoying HBO's Game of Thrones. The characters are very compelling and I have always been a bit of a fantasy junkie, so this is right up my alley. The acting is good, as well as production, and the story is fantastic. In the most recent episode, the main character of the season Eddard Stark, who happened to be the most recognizable figure was killed off. This series really keeps you guessing, unfortunately I am going to pick up all of the books in the Song of Fire and Ice series that it is based upon. Also my younger brother celebrated his 21st birthday with a pig roast on Saturday, lots of beer and several shots were had by all, my wife Marina went a little overboard unfortunately ending our night a little earlier than I had planned, still fun though! The pulled pork from the leftover pig was excellent too!